


oh, monsters are scared (that's why they're monsters)

by lovethybooty



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Coping, Dark, District 4, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Mental Health Issues, PTSD, Panem, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-09
Updated: 2016-06-09
Packaged: 2018-07-13 23:21:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7142345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovethybooty/pseuds/lovethybooty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>to tame a monster, you must make it forget it was ever a beast.</p>
            </blockquote>





	oh, monsters are scared (that's why they're monsters)

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to play around with the violently monsterous side effects of winning the Hunger Games.
> 
> I thought there was no one better to do it with than Annie- a girl so effected by her Games they say it drove her mad. 
> 
> I wrote this, and I'm quite happy with the ending- because it shows that the things that calmed her symptoms did not heal her, time did.
> 
> Title from Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane.
> 
> Big thanks to oh_so_loverly for prereading it and helping me smooth out a few kinks!
> 
> Happy Reading! :D

They say that the only monsters are the ones we create ourselves.

When she finally returns home to District Four, showered in extravagant gifts and the finest cold home money can buy- she collapses. She bathes in a bed of invisible blood every night and they can't seem to figure out why she won't stop screaming.

The scratches on her skin, rising from the surface like rivers of lava, mimic the gashes on the eyes of the girl from Two- but she is dead, drowned at the bottom of a ravine in pool of her own dirty blood, only to be shipped back to her district, unrecognizable in a steel coffin sealed so tight that it cannot be opened.

She does not go near water. They try to bathe her and she screeches like a hell harpy, a banshee with eyes so red they might as well be rubies.

Calming her from her fits is no easier. Casualties include the broken nose of Dorian Basel and the temporary scar that marked Finnick Odair's left cheek. The latter results in the forceful filing of her nails, taking them from sharp talons to flat beds that bleed- metallic and flowing when she bites at them. She wails the entire time, kicking out her legs in a vain attempt to stop the hands that grab at her from all directions, trying to pin her down against the mattress. They feel like ghosts and she envisions the hands of sickly pale children clawing at her as she struggles to get free. In their hands she feels the hands of the boy that tried to choke her. It might as well be the same thing.

There are days when she is more or less silent, lost so far in a world of her own that they cannot call her back to shore. Eventually, they give up trying- using the excuse that the daydreaming keeps her from living the nightmare.

This gives them the idea to pump her full of drugs. Things heavier than morphling that knock her out days on end. It's better to sleep in submission than to wrestle in the wake.

By the second week of medication, she looks like a junky- needle tracks riddle her arms like a dotted treasure map, because sedation is the only way to satiate a mad girl. Her eyes glaze over in a cloudy haze and she stares blankly at blank walls because it makes no difference- she can't see a damn thing anyway.

Annie Cresta wastes away for months, rotting in a house too big for her small frame, too selfish to wash away her sins, too cold to keep the ghosts at bay.

But eventually she gets better. She stops kicking and wailing and biting and screaming and punching and trying to kill every living thing that moves in her direction with her tiny bare hands. She does not remember breaking Dorian's nose, nor leaving Finnick and Tyne bruised and beaten- so they let her forget. She does not remember her episodes or the drugs- so they let her forget that too. In fact, she does not remember any of it- they don't try to remind her.

One day she asks Finnick about the scratch scars on her wrists, fading now, but still embedded deep within her skin. He tells her it was Charybdis. She is drowsy and half asleep, so she believes him and doesn't bring it up again.

She becomes relatively normal, yet still undeniably broken- with cracks that are filled by glass and sand. There are times when she sees heads without bodies and hears whispers that are too soft for the ears of those around her. She swears she faintly remembers Mags cooing, "shush, child," before there is nothing but blackness- but attributes it to the other slew of false memories that still taint her mind.

To tame a monster, you must make it forget that it was ever a beast.


End file.
